Engineering the extraordinary

Like many great entrepreneurs, Warren A. Bechtel would take a few frightening steps toward failure before he found the path to success. In 1898, a nearly bankrupt 25-year-old Bechtel and his pregnant wife, Clara, left Peabody, Kansas, and headed 100 miles (161 kilometers) south in search of construction work and new opportunity. Thus began an epic journey that would span more than a century of building, five generations of his family, and eventually much of the globe.